Global Biodiversity, Trade, and Conservation Funding

Biodiversity

This figure depicts the total number of species by country that are included in the IUCN Redlist. Note that this clearly is not an accurate representation of global biodiversity. Tropical regions are known to harbor far greater biodiversity than more temperate regions, such as most of Europe or the United States. Thus the fact that the United States and Canada are displayed as having the greatest species richness here, followed by places like Australia, could be a function of the area of these countries, but that alone would not be sufficient to explain the disparity, because places like Russia and China do not display the same unusually high species richness. This is probably due then to the amount of available resources that each country devotes to the tabulation of species data, because tropical regions may not have as many resources and researchers as the United States to devote to the counting of species, and places like China and Russia may not prioritize it as heavily.

International Trade

Conservation Funding (as of 2013)

This figure depicts the amount of funding each country is granted and/or devotes to conservation, on a log scale. The countries that receive and utilize the most conservation funding are the same countries that are displayed above as having the greatest biodiversity. This is not surprising, in that it is probably since both of these variables (conservation funding and observed species counts) are a function of the amount to which a country is able to and chooses to prioritize conservation efforts. We know that these countries are not in fact the most biodiverse however, so although it is good that they prioritize conservation within their borders, the fact that conservation in Africa and Central America is underfunded in comparison should be a cause for concern.

Network of Trade between countries

Count of Species exported by the countries

National Parks

Northeastern Cities

It makes sense that more species have been introduced to the four coastal cities than to the four inland cities, considering how many invasive species are transported (intentionally or not) by boats.